Still Breeding Thoughts
by Assimbya
Summary: Alone in his prison, Richard muses and dreams.


Within the small world of his prison, Richard dreams. He dreams of his past and his imagined future, of moments that never were and moments that still could be. The dreams come to him in his sleep and in his waking hours, come to him in such brightness that he could weep.

He dreams, sometimes, that he is a courtier before Bolingbroke's throne. He kneels, with practiced movements as graceful as choreography, and feels deference and respect and envy whirling within him in bright colors. He looks up into King Henry's eyes and sees that they are his own. Or not, perhaps – they are the king's eyes, and within the dream he remembers, suddenly, plucking them out of his own head and placing them in his usurper's palms. _For I must see now not as I have. I must see not through the prism that casts the varicolored light of 'mine' over the earth of this country. Give me new eyes, Bolingbroke, that I might see you as my king and myself as thy subject._

He dreams, in other hours, that he is king still, and that Bolingbroke kneels before him. In the dreams he can see an orange light of treachery ringing his figure, and, in the dreams he shall act to prevent that light (hot like fire to the touch – for he can imagine touching Bolingbroke's skin, feeling that warmth of anger and drinking it up, unquenchable) from burning up his throne and country.

In those dreams, he does not exile Bolingbroke. For Bolingbroke, he knows, is England's, and England (his country, his mistress, his self) does not like to be deprived of what is hers. Richard locks Bolingbroke in a dark chamber deep within the earth. _Let the country swallow him, _his dream-self cries, _let him be devoured, his fire extinguished by the weight of soil, and when farmers and gardeners plant their seeds in the earth let Bolingbroke's patriotism give them life, no longer turned to treachery, but only to the service of his country._

Would that he had locked Bolingbroke away, in a cell to which only he held the key. Would that he had ordered his execution, red blood spilling upon the dark earth. Would that he had taken him into himself, kissed his unsmiling lips until he forgot that subservience to his king had weighed upon him like chains.

But those choices are made and cannot be undone. Bolingbroke was exiled and returned. The heavy crown was handed over, and Richard lives now in dreams and imaginings, wearing his prison garments as penitence for the crimes of all his country and touching his hands to the smooth stone that surrounds him.

He tries sometimes (for he experiments in controlling his dreams, directing them, and while such endeavors are often unsuccessful, sometimes he is rewarded with an image of Anne's pale hands picking apples in place of his uncertain nightmares of Bolingbroke) to dream only within his prison. If his imagination can make undeniable beauty of this place of grave-silence and traitors' pleas, than he shall fear nothing. And so he imagines young Aumerle visiting him inside the tower's rounded walls, lips kissing Richard's bare feet in adoration. Images of sensuous embraces with the youth upon the prison's thin cot leave Richard aching in want.

Oh, but he is dying there for lack of beauty.

He looks for beauty within what he can see and touch and taste. He caresses every stone, loving it for the fact that it belong to his once-realm, that the great blocks were hewn out of the earth with sweat and wrenching effort. In the simplicity of the food he is given he looks for flavors undiscovered in the sumptuous banquets of his reign. As he asks his guard to taste his food for poison, he watches the man, looking for beauty in him, in the contours of his face, the shift of bone and muscle beneath his simple uniform.

Still, though, it is not enough to sustain him, and, despite his resolve, his dreaming mind travels over what was his country, over hills and valleys, into castles and manors, across the great wide sea, into the past and future and through the great horizontal of the present.

In all the years of his kingship, Richard longed often to speak with another who had worn the crown which weighed upon his head, another whose hand had held his scepter. With the crown forever gone from him, he finally does. In long dreams he travels to where Bolingbroke sits, robes newly heavy, upon the throne of the king, and he speaks to him. He speaks to him of ruling, and of being king, of the heady brightness of coronation and the sharp taste of responsibility. He places his thin hands upon his successor-usurper's face and stares into his broken-mirror eyes. In that imagined touch (or not imagined, for it is the touch of their hands in the transfer of the crown, only lengthened into the true self-transference it should have been) he gives himself to Bolingbroke, and ensures his eternity.

Most kings have heirs, sons or nephews in whose empty vessel of identity they place themselves, ensuring their continuance, creating that thing called dynasty. Richard had not that luxury. But, in his dreams, he makes an heir of his country's traitor.

They are dreams only, those ones, and that he knows. Bolingbroke-Henry will have already made of himself a new type of king, shaped the velvet robes of sovereignty to his own form. Richard does not know how the inevitable tide of the future shall imagine him, but it shall not have a descendent of his upon its throne, a figure in which to glimpse his hazy portrait.

He denies the thought of posterity's condemnation, puts it from his mind. Let the world shrink down, he prays, let the world, the kingdom shrink to the confines of his cell so that his imagination, as beautifully colored as stained glass, can fill it up to the brink, to overflowing. Let the phantoms of his mind form lush tapestries to deck the drab stone walls. Let thoughts of kingship fade from his mind until the prison is realm enough to satisfy him.

The dreams shift in his consciousness, and do not obey.


End file.
